Chapter
XXXVIII.—Christ, by Raising the Dead, Attested in a Practical Way
the Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Flesh.

After the Lord’s words, what are we
to think of the purport of His actions, when He raises dead
persons from their biers and their graves? To what end did He do
so? If it was only for the mere exhibition of His power, or to afford
the temporary favour of restoration to life, it was really no great
matter for Him to raise men to die over again. If, however, as was the
truth, it was rather to put in secure keeping men’s belief in a
future resurrection, then it must follow from the particular form of
His own examples, that the said resurrection will be a bodily one. I
can never allow it to be said that the resurrection of the future,
being destined for the soul only, did then receive these preliminary
illustrations of a raising of the flesh, simply because it would have
been impossible to have shown the 573resurrection of an invisible soul except
by the resuscitation of a visible substance. They have but a poor
knowledge of God, who suppose Him to be only capable of doing what
comes within the compass of their own thoughts; and after all, they
cannot but know full well what His capability has ever been, if they
only make acquaintance with the writings of John. For unquestionably
he, who has exhibited to our sight the martyrs’ hitherto
disembodied souls resting under the altar,75347534Rev. vi. 9–11.
was quite able to display them before our eyes rising without a body of
flesh. I, however, for my part prefer (believing) that it is impossible
for God to practise deception (weak as He only could be in respect of
artifice), from any fear of seeming to have given preliminary proofs of
a thing in a way which is inconsistent with His actual disposal of the
thing; nay more, from a fear that, since He was not powerful enough to
show us a sample of the resurrection without the flesh, He might with
still greater infirmity be unable to display (by and by) the full
accomplishment of the sample in the self-same substance of the
flesh. No example, indeed, is greater than the thing of which it is
a sample. Greater, however, it is, if souls with their body are to be
raised as the evidence of their resurrection without the body, so as
that the entire salvation of man in soul and body should become
a guarantee for only the half, the soul; whereas the condition
in all examples is, that which would be deemed the less—I mean
the resurrection of the soul only—should be the foretaste, as it
were, of the rising of the flesh also at its appointed time. And
therefore, according to our estimate of the truth, those examples of
dead persons who were raised by the Lord were indeed a proof of the
resurrection both of the flesh and of the soul,—a proof, in fact,
that this gift was to be denied to neither substance. Considered,
however, as examples only, they expressed all the less
significance—less, indeed, than Christ will express at
last—for they were not raised up for glory and immortality, but
only for another death.